Robert Barnes of the Washington Post explores the question no one seems to think he should have bothered asking: "Does President Obama's next Supreme Court nominee need to be a Protestant?"
Clearly, the court thinks of itself as post-religious. Last fall, Alito said he was frustrated that discussions about the court's Catholic majority became "one of those questions that does not die." He complained of "respectable people who have seriously raised the questions in serious publications about whether these individuals could be trusted to do their jobs."
Scalia has said he would be "hard-pressed to tell you of a single opinion of mine that would have come out differently if I were not Catholic." Ginsburg has said that whereas her predecessors on the court have been known collectively as the "Jewish justices," she and Breyer are "justices who happen to be Jews."
If President Obama nominates another Justice, here's hoping the media and the Senate confirmation process spends as much time considering the nominee's record and viewpoint on the constitutional balance of church-state separation as they do the denominational balance of the court's own members. More substance, please.
